AMERICAN EDITION

October 2014

IN THIS EDITION

THE GERMAN MILITARY – 1st class personnel. 3rd class equipment.

THE DAY OF GERMAN UNITY & THE WALL – It’s their 4th of July. The Wall still exists.

THE EAST GERMANY EFFECT – East Germany didn’t just disappear.

LOOTED ART RECOVERY CENTER ESTABLISHED – It should help legal owners.

THE OTHER LEADER: GERMANY’S PRESIDENT – Unknown by many.

WHO IS HURT BY GERMAN ECONOMIC POLICY? GERMANY? – Will it change?

DOING THE RIGHT THING IN WIESBADEN – The Museum handles looted art.

GERMANY & ISRAEL: NEW WARSHIPS – Not only submarines.

Dear Friends:

The chillier air of fall has arrived in New York. No complaints! We had a great, cool summer. Let’s hope we don’t have to pay our dues with a non-stop winter like we had in 2013-14.

While things are never at a standstill, matters dealing with German – Jewish relations are relatively quiet. There have been a couple of articles about many young Israelis moving to Berlin (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/waves-of-young-israelis-find-a-home-in-the-former-nazi-capital/2014/10/21/7ecd02bf-70fa-4b9f-b226-c4be22049a2f_story.html?hpid=z1 .It has annoyed some Israelis for various reasons. My take is that Jews should be able to live wherever they want without anti-Semitism or difficulty of any kind. Berlin is a very open and welcoming city. Other cities around the world should use it as a model.

The American and German governments seem to be pretty much at peace with each other these days. No new telephone tapping or other new spying disasters have emerged lately. Ain’t peace wonderful?

Even in this time of relative quiet there still seemed to be plenty to report and write about. So, let’s get on with it…

THE GERMAN MILITARY:

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If you’re old enough to remember World War II or have even read about it you know that the German military (then called the Wehrmacht) was a mighty force. It is now renamed, the Bundeswehr, it’s a lot different than its predecessor. In the 1930’s and 1940’s it rolled over much of Europe until it butted heads with the Russian Winter and the Americans who entered the fray late. Even then its equipment was very high grade.

Today the situation is just not the same. A total defeat in the war, the now deeply imbedded cultural change in Germany to pacifism and its involvement in NATO, where the understanding pretty much is that the U.S. will fight any war that are necessary to be fought, seems to have reduced the need to supply their soldiers with enough of the right kind of equipment. .

Spiegel on Line recently reported, “Germany wants to strengthen its role in international affairs. But recent reports suggest the country's weapons systems are in such disrepair that Berlin actually has very little to offer its partners.

Last week, a single person pushed Germany's air force to the very limits of its capacities: Ursula von der Leyen, the country's defense minister requested that two Transall military transport aircraft with missile defense systems be transferred to Amman, the Jordanian capital. [It didn’t happen]The defense minister and a pool of reporters then flew for eight hours on Thursday morning in one of the aircraft to Erbil in Iraq's Kurdish region. Back in Germany, the military had but a single additional Transall at its disposal.

After her arrival in Erbil, von der Leyen proceeded to the palace of the Kurdish regional government's president. Her visit was to be concurrent with the delivery of German weapons, intended to aid the Kurds in their fight against Islamic State jihadists. Unfortunately, the machine guns and bazookas got stuck in Germany and the trainers in Bulgaria because of a dearth of available aircraft. One had been grounded because of a massive fuel leak. What could have been a shining moment for the minister instead turned into an embarrassing failure underscoring the miserable state of many of the Bundeswehr's most important weapons systems.

Von der Leyen wants to transform the Bundeswehr, the country's armed forces, into an intervention army capable of mastering deployments like those in Kosovo or Afghanistan. But the idea of deterrence based on powerful combat units and heavy weapons has also gained currency as a result of the crisis in Ukraine.

However…

[The] members of the[military evaluation] committee reviewed a paper that provided a color-coded green, yellow and red classifications based on an assessment of the operational capability of the 22 main weapons systems used by the army, navy and air force.

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It appears that the paper included a considerable amount of misleading information and that the military might even be in worse shape than that presented by the officials.

High-ranking military officials involved had the option of giving a seemingly arbitrary green, yellow or red classification for systems for which their unit had responsibility. Germany's lone deployable submarine (of four) received a yellow rating. Seventy of the country's 180 Boxer armored combat vehicles were deemed unfit for deployment. Defense Ministry sources also told SPIEGEL that Bundeswehr General Inspector Volker Wieker even made last-minute changes to the color codes on some of the systems. Meanwhile, air force Chief Karl Müllner made clear in remarks to members of the committee that, despite green dots signifying equipment was working, his forces were only capable of conducting current missions and did not have the capacity for any new ones. Officials at the ministry stated that the "classification system used is based on a combination of availability for deployment and training as well as consideration for the ability to fulfill the mission."

There’s more but by now I think you get the idea. It should be fully understood that this failure to give the Bundeswehr adequate equipment has nothing (absolutely nothing!) to do with the quality of those who serve in their military. Over the years I have had considerable contact with Bundeswehr personnel. They are of the highest caliber and very dedicated to democracy. Over and above that, they serve honorably on missions where there is little glory supplying help and assistance where it is needed. They serve shoulder to shoulder with our own servicemen and women

For whatever the reason, It is a genuine disgrace that these noble military people do not get the backing they deserve. I hope the government understands that and rights the wrong ASAP. After all, they are NATO military and may at any moment be called upon to undertake genuinely important missions. Obviously, at this moment they’re not ready.

An updated report can be read by clicking here. http://www.dw.de/merkel-peeks-over-bundeswehr-shortfall-parapet/a-17973151

THE DAY OF GERMAN UNITY & THE WALL

Earlier this month Germans celebrated the Day of German Unity. According to Wikipedia, “The Day of German Unity (German: Tag der Deutschen Einheit) is the national day of Germany, celebrated on 3 October as a public holiday. It commemorates the anniversary of German reunification in 1990, when the goal of a unity of Germany that originated in the middle of the 19th century, was fulfilled again. Therefore, the name addresses neither the re-union nor the union, but the unity of Germany. The Day of German Unity on 3 October has been the German national holiday since 1990, when the reunification was formally completed. It is a legal holiday for the Federal Republic of Germany.

An alternative choice to commemorate the reunification could have been the day the Berlin Wall came down: 9 November 1989, which coincided with the anniversary of the proclamation of the German Republic in 1918, and the defeat of Hitler's first coup in

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1923. However, 9 November was also the anniversary of the first large-scale Nazi-led pogroms against Jews in 1938 (Kristallnacht), so the day was considered inappropriate as a national holiday. Therefore, 3 October 1990, the day of the formal reunification, was chosen instead and replaced the "Day of German Unity" on 17 June, the national holiday of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1954.

Obviously, like our July 4th, Oct. 3rd is a very important day. However, unlike our national day which first took place over 200 years ago, German unity is now only 25 years old. Yes! They are one nation but like our own, togetherness was a long time in coming and is fraught with many problems. I’ll deal with all of that a bit more below.

Perhaps the most outstanding symbol of the divided Germany was the Berlin Wall. As almost everyone knows who has not lived under a rock for the last quarter century, it came down in 1989 and signified the end of East Germany as a separate country and the end of communism in Europe. However, what many people do not know (if you haven’t visited Berlin) is that parts of the Wall still remain. To give you a little tour of the remnants, Deutsche Welle (DW.de) has put together a video which you can see by clicking here. http://www.dw.de/along-the-berlin-wall-line/av-17874803

THE EAST GERMANY EFFECT

When the two Germanys came together in 1990 many people thought it wouldn’t be so much a merger as a takeover by West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany – FRG). East Germany (German Democratic Republic – GDR) was pretty much a failed state, was about to be relegated to the dustbin of history and all things FRG would remain as they were, but only bigger and better. That’s not what happened.

There was no way that the inclusion of more than 17 million people who had only lived under Nazism and communism would not have at least some effect on the “new” Germany. As it turned out there was a major effect including having a former “Ossie” (Easterner) who grew to adulthood in the GDR, 25 years after the Wall fell, as its dynamic Chancellor.

Dirk Kurbjuweit writing in Spiegel On-Line has noted, “Were the courageous citizens of East German cities like Leipzig and Halle merely added to the army of consumers, without bringing any political change to their new country?

A revolution has two goals: to put an end to everything that preceded it and to create something new. The revolutionaries of 1989 achieved the first goal when the GDR ceased to exist as a country. But the second goal was a different matter. The Federal Republic, as West Germany was (and today's Germany is) formally known, enveloped the former East Germany, and the new entity was something familiar, at least at first. The West had expanded eastward.

But now, 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it is clear that this is not the whole story. The revolution also created the conditions for something new, a different

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Germany. The institutions haven't changed and the West German economy continues to dominate, but something has also flowed in the opposite direction. Could it be that the Federal Republic of Germany, which has been gazing westward since 1949, has become more eastern in the last few years?

Nothing has contributed more to this change than the chancellor from the east, Angela Merkel. She is a democrat and a champion of freedom, and she hasn't created an expanded GDR. Nevertheless, there are aspects to the way she runs the country that are reminiscent of the former East Germany.

A dictatorship fears open discourse and conflict, and it thrives on the fiction of unity. The ruler or the ruling party claims that it is executing the will of the people, and because that will is supposed to be uniform, everyone is under forced consensus. Silence in the country is treated as approval. Merkel grew up in this system.

Elements of it are reflected in her political style. She despises open dispute, she does not initiate discourse and she feels comfortable when silence prevails. She prefers to govern within a grand coalition, because it enables her to create broad consensus within small groups. Things have become quieter in Germany.

While Merkel brings the East German element of silence instead of discourse into federal German politics, President Joachim Gauck, also an East German, provides an audible dissidence. As a pastor in the northeastern city of Rostock, Gauck was no resistance fighter, yet he was a civil rights activist. He injects his energetic approach to freedom into German politics, along with the message that freedom must be fought for or defended, with armed force, if necessary.

The citizens of East Germany had not alienated themselves as strongly from their counterparts in West Germany, despite encouragement from the SED. The country bordering theirs to the west remained a place of aspirations and hopes -- for more freedom and a higher level of consumption. The step they took following their revolution was in fact not a step into a completely alien world. Despite the separation, citizens in the eastern and western parts of Germany retained a similar political mentality.

Germans value a strong social welfare state. In the GDR, it provided total care at a low level. While it isn't as comprehensive in the federal republic, it also offers a better standard of living.

Both the east and the west have a tendency toward anti-capitalism. It was an established part of the system in the GDR, while in West Germany it developed in a special form called the Rhenish model of capitalism, which was less permissive than the Anglo-Saxon model and allowed for more government influence.

Hopefully, the above excerpts give you some insights into the makeup of current day Germany. There is much more in the article dealing with the Left Party (made up partly of former citizens of the GDR), militarism, anti-Americanism, etc. You should read it all.You can by clicking here. http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/how-east-

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germany-influences-modern-day-german-politics-a-994410.html

What the article does not do is cover the impact the German unification had (and has) on Jews, Judaism and Israel. We do know that the end of the Soviet Union brought a goodly number of Jews to Germany. While the Wall was up the Jews in Germany numbered about 28,000. There are now, in all probability, more than 200,000. There is vibrant Jewish life in quite a few communities.

On the other hand, the GDR had a strong anti-Israel bent. How much of that lasts in the hearts, minds and culture of former easterners is an unanswerable question. We do know, however, that the Left Party is the most pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel party in the political spectrum.

But…we also know that former “Ossie” Angela Merkel leads the most pro-Israel party and continues to lead the most Israel-friendly government in Europe. Her statement at the recent anti anti-Semitism rally, ““That people in Germany are threatened and abused because of their appearance or their support for Israel is an outrageous scandal that we won’t accept, It’s our national and civic duty to fight anti-Semitism.” says it all.

LOOTED ART RECOVERY CENTER ESTABLISHED

DW recently reported, “Germany's Cabinet has approved a center to fortify the hunt for art looted by the Nazis. The culture minister says Germany has a responsibility to find works stolen from across Europe during the 1930s and 1940s.

Acting on months of suggestions to better use resources to track looted art, the Cabinet made plans to fortify the search for works stolen during the Nazi era. The idea would incorporate Berlin's Bureau for Provenance Research into the German Lost-Art Foundation, basing the operation in the latter's headquarters in the eastern city of Magdeburg, and increasing its budget by about 5 million euros ($6.3 million).

Germany came under fire late last year after it came to light that Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of a prominent Nazi-era art dealer, had hidden a collection in his Munich flat for years - and in February a second stash was found in Austria.

"It's not just the Gurlitt case and the domestic and foreign reaction that have made it clear that we must expand our efforts in the issues of provenance research and restitution,” Culture Minister Monika Grütters (pictured), a Christian Democrat, had said when proposing the foundation back in February.

Authorities believed that at least some expropriated pieces became part of Gurlitt's collection, which had an estimated worth of 1 billion euros. The collector, who died in May, willed his holdings to the Museum of Fine Arts Bern, which is expected to decide at a November 26 board meeting whether to accept the roughly 1,300 pieces, including works by Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall and others.

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Grütters said the public outcry about the discovery showed that many people did not think that German authorities had sufficiently committed to the issue yet. By creating the new center, the country can concentrate local, state and federal workers under one roof to research the history of the items in question.

The proposal still requires approval from leaders of German states and municipal governments. They are expected to vote on that at a meeting of regional culture ministers in the Ruhrgebiet city of Essen

It is well known that much of the art work in question was looted by the Nazis from Jewish owners. I think that the centralizing of the attempt to identify the owners (or estates of the owners) will help a lot in hastening the process of restoring the art to the lawful owners.. All along I’ve thought that Minister Grütters would get the job done. She is very sensitive to matters affecting the Jewish community and so her efforts come as no surprise.

THE OTHER LEADER: GERMANY’S PRESIDENT

The well-known TV ad for GEICO which trumpets “Everybody knows that” applies to Angela Merkel as German Chancellor. However, as the ad continues, “But did you know that…?” might very be the question asked about the identity of Germany’s President.

Outside of Germany (and maybe some of the countries in Europe) I doubt seriously that many, particularly in the U.S., could identify the former East German pastor Joachim Gauck as the President of Germany. After the identification is made, a legitimate question might be, “What does the German president do?”

According to Wikipedia. “Germany has a parliamentary system of government with the Federal Chancellor running the government and the politics of the day. However, the German President has a role which is more than ceremonial with the office being a genuine political office with extensive discretion regarding the way the President exercises his official duties. The Federal President gives direction to general political and societal debates and has some important "reserve powers" in case of political instability (such as those provided for by Article 81 of the Basic Law) Under Article 59 (1) of the Basic Law (German Constitution), the Federal President represents the Federal Republic of Germany in matters of international law, concludes treaties with foreign states on its behalf and accredits diplomats Furthermore, all federal laws must be signed by the President before they can come into effect; however, he can only veto a law that he believes to violate the constitution.

The Federal President, by his actions and public appearances, represents the state itself, its existence, its legitimacy, and unity. The President's office involves an integrative role and the control function of upholding the law and the constitution.

So, as you can see, the President is just not some figurehead. He can have a lot to say and if he is held in high esteem (which is normal for the holder of the office) what he does say carries a lot of weight..

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Pres. Gauck, a pastor and civil rights leader in East Germany is now about half-way through his first term. According to DW, the first 2 ½ years were undistinguished. However, they now opine, “In Gauck, Germany has a self-confident president who performs his duties energetically. Gauck has learned to skillfully insert himself into the major political debates, without ever sliding into the indignity of day-to-day politics. That does Germany good. The president finds clear words where the chancellor keeps quiet or lurks in ambiguities. That suits both of them. Instead of the feared conflict between the two leaders, we get the opposite: an almost perfect complementary partnership. On the one hand, the pragmatic Angela Merkel who approaches problems with a scientist's exactitude and calm - on the other, Joachim Gauck, who seeks direct dialogue and plays masterfully on the keyboard of emotions.

Gauck's form improved significantly after he found the central themes of his presidency: Germany's role in the world and the great conflicts of our time. And so he criticized Russia and, referring to the Ukraine conflict, he said, "territorial concessions often only broaden the appetite of aggressors." The supporters of the far-right NPD he called "idiots," while the policies of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan he termed a "danger to democracy."

At the Munich Security Conference, he said rightly that Germany should - commensurate with its economic power - start intervening earlier and more decisively in international crises and, if necessary, by military means - something that divided the public. The issue dominated headlines for days, and proved at last that Gauck is more than just a feel-good president fulfilling a symbolic role.

Recently Pres., Gauck was interviewed by Britain’s Globe & Mail. Part of the interview follows:

You recently talked about a new anti-Semitism in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Can you elaborate about what it means, and what state and civil society can do about it?

He replied:

In Germany, as elsewhere, aggressive anti-Semitic sentiments were expressed during several demonstrations on the Israel-Palestine conflict this summer. Traditional anti-Semitism in Germany and other European countries came together here with a new anti-Semitism which is found in certain migrant communities. I find that very worrying indeed. However, the overwhelming majority of my fellow Germans have distanced themselves from this. Recently, the Muslim community organised a day of action against racism and extremism. And at a major rally in Berlin two weeks ago, I and Chancellor Merkel witnessed once more that anti-Semitic comments in Germany don’t go unchallenged. The public, the media and politicians are united in resolutely rejecting these shameful sentiments and condemning them in the strongest possible terms.

I don’t think we could ask for better.

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WHO IS HURT BY GERMAN ECONOMIC POLICY? GERMANY?

The first thing you should know is that I know practically nothing about economics. So, I cannot be a judge of the Washington Post’s opinion writer Harold Meyerson and his column on the danger of Germany’s economic policy. However, when he says,

“…I’m no fan of Germany’s macroeconomics, which are more destructive and dangerous than those of any other nation. By using its power as the dominant nation in the European Union to impose austerity on the struggling economies of Southern Europe, Germany has condemned young people in Spain and Greece to unemployment rates in excess of 50 percent, shaken the social fabric of every nation on the Mediterranean and contributed to the rise of such far-right parties as France’s National Front and Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn. Unlike other nations, Germany hasn’t offshored its best industrial jobs, but it has relentlessly offshored to its Southern neighbor’s conditions conducive to the rise of a xenophobic extremism that one would think Germany, of all nations, wouldn’t wish to nourish,

I think we should all listen. He continues,

The challenges facing the nations of Mediterranean Europe are hard-wired into the structure of the European Union, but Germany has made them incomparably worse. Just as the euro has enabled Germany to boost its exports by making them cheaper than they’d be if the country had a currency that reflected the strength of its economy, it has also overpriced exports from the nations of Southern Europe, which cannot devalue their currencies to reflect their economic weakness. Having forfeited the ability to adjust their monetary policy to boost their economies, the Mediterranean nations have also been blocked from stimulating their economies fiscally by the European Union’s prohibition of budget deficits that exceed 3 percent of nations’ gross domestic products. Historically, those budget limits have been amended or waived during downturns, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel has continually insisted that the union impose austerity on nations whose economies required the very opposite: public works projects to boost employment and consumption, not to mention political stability.

Now, the dummkopf fiscal policies of Merkel’s government have begun to threaten even the German economy. Manufacturers need customers, exporters need the nations that import their goods to be solvent, and Germany — the world’s most successful exporter — is finally running out of neighbors who can buy what it produces. German exports fell by almost 6 percent in August, and its industrial production fell by 4 percent. Though Germany has been experiencing unprecedented prosperity, Merkel has also reduced domestic public investment, much to the dismay of German business leaders who complain of decaying roads and rails. Her commitment to austerity at home as well as abroad now adds to the threats to the German economy.

It’s an appalling prescription — something that any student of German history should easily grasp. At the conclusion of World War I, the Versailles Treaty inflicted on Germany’s first democratic government, the Weimar Republic, a level of reparations and austerity that rendered it incapable of dealing with the Great Depression and

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contributed greatly to the Nazis’ rise to power. By enforcing austerity on Mediterranean nations with depression-level unemployment, Merkel has become a latter-day Clemenceau, imposing a neo-Versailles that weakens support for mainstream democratic parties and politics in those countries and fosters a climate where scapegoating and bigotry thrive. That’s a hell of a legacy for a chancellor of Germany.

Again, I don’t know whether Mr. Meyerson is right or not. I can’t believe that Chancellor Merkel is unaware of the possible dangers of her current policy. She always seems to know what she’s doing and is very cautious. As a dedicated European, I hardly think she intends to continue on with a policy that would harmful to the other EU members and to her own country. However, national leaders do make mistakes and get caught up in believing that certain policies are positive when in actuality they are the exact reverse.

What I do know is that when reasonable people (I gather Myerson is reasonable) make strong assertions they should at least be looked at and examined thoroughly. I hope the German government does exactly that.

DOING THE RIGHT THING IN WIESBADEN

Not only was art looted by the Nazis in the city of Wiesbaden during their reign, but according to The Local.de, “The Wiesbaden Museum was once a collection house for art stolen from Jewish owners by the Nazi. With one painting, they hope to right at least one wrong while bringing awareness to its ongoing restitution work.

On the second floor of the Wiesbaden Museum in Hessen hangs a piece of art from Hans von Marées but it can't be seen.

The painting called "The Refreshment" has been hung to face the wall as part of a public donation campaign to buy the painting for a fair price from its last legal owner.

In 1934, Max Silberberg, a Jewish industrialist in Breslau, was forced to sell the painting to the local Nazi regime, after which it landed in Wiesbaden. Silberberg and his wife were both murdered in Auschwitz.

"The painting has been in storage and has not been seen since the 1980s," a spokesperson for the Wiesbaden Museum told The Local on Monday, adding that it will remain unseen when or if the museum can raise the money to buy it.

"We agreed on a price, but it doesn't yet belong to us, and so we won't show it until it legally does," the spokesperson added.

The Refreshment" is in the middle of the museum's permanent collection and the only painting in the "Wiesbaden creates the Turn" campaign in which €93,000 has to be raised. That amount covers the cost of the campaign and a third of the buying price. The rest will be paid out by the "Friends of Museum Weisbaden" organization and the culture ministries from the state.

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"We want to right not only the image, but also a wrong," said Thilo von Debschnitz of the creative agency Q who came up with the concept of the exhibition. The idea behind the campaign was not just to acquire the painting for the Wiesbaden Museum, but also to highlight the work being done by art institutions to correct some of the wrongs done by the Nazi regime.

Wiesbaden Museum was once headed by Herman Voss, who was given the duty by Adolf Hitler to collect artworks for the planned Führermuseum in Linz.

Two other paintings have been returned to or bought from rightful heirs out of the gallery's archives. 

What was done in the 1930’s cannot be undone. However, what the Wiesbaden Museum is now doing goes a long way to show they are on the right path. In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s I visited Wiesbaden with a groups of AJC’ers as part of the program AJC has with the Adenauer Foundation. Each time we were received by its Mayor, Helmut Mueller. Mayor Mueller had been a German participant in the program in 1990 and his sensitivity to matters Jewish and the German responsibilities in post-Holocaust Germany were evident. It seems that much of the leadership in Wiesbaden share those feelings.

GERMANY & ISRAEL: NEW WARSHIPS

I don’t think it’s much of a secret that Germany has a massive arms industry and that it has been a blessing for Israel particularly because of the submarines it was able to obtain from Germany - mostly at reduced prices. A submarine off the coast of Iran equipped with a nuclear weapon aboard is a pretty good deterrent.

With the discovery of huge natural gas fields off Israel’s coast another necessity has appeared on the scene – the need to guard the drilling platforms.

Enter Germany!

The Jerusalem Post noted recently, “The [Israel] Ministry of Defense said this week that it is examining a proposal by the German government to sell Israel navy ships for the protection of Israel's Exclusive Economic Zone in the Mediterranean Sea.

The bid came months after the Ministry of Defense issued a tender for the purchase of ships to defend the zone, which contains underwater gas reservoirs and offshore platforms.

According to the ministry's statement, the German government sent a proposal for supplying "defense ships through a German shipyard, and for a partial [financial] participation by the German government. The offer is being examined by the relevant elements but no decision has been taken regarding this issue." In May, former navy chief Adm. (res.) Eliezer Marom said Israel and Cyprus should coordinate defenses of their offshore natural gas rigs.

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This would avoid the kind of situation in which Cypriot and Israeli maritime patrol aircraft fly near one another and monitor the same naval sectors, but transmit their data to Tel Aviv and Larnaca respectively, without any coordination, he added.

In recent years, Israel has installed multiple layers of defenses around the offshore platforms in its exclusive economic zone, Marom added. "Looking out from the rig, one sees only water all around. But that's a deceptive view. It's not an island. There's a whole world [of defenses] around," he said.

One should note that, again, Israel’s statement notes “a partial [financial] participation by the German government.” Reduced prices never hurt. I think there are several reasons why the Germans are so willing to enhance the strength of Israel’s navy. Of course, the manufacture and sale of naval vessels is good for the German economy – even at reduced prices. I also believe that Germany continues to fulfill its commitment to keep the Jewish nations strong. History plays an important role.

In addition keeping Israel strong reduces the possibility of more disintegration in the Middle East which fits into the German policy of trying to improve stability and the keeping of the peace.

Israeli warships are good for Israel and good for Germany. A win-win situation!

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See you again in November.

DuBow Digest is written and published by Eugene DuBow who can be reached at dubowdigest@optonline.net

Both the American and Germany editions are posted at www.dubowdigest.typepad.com

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